Love Among the Chickens u-1 Read online

  “You know,” I said, “I am absolutely inexperienced as regards fowls. I just know enough to help myself to bread sauce when I see one, but no more.”

  “Excellent! You’re just the man. You will bring to the work a mind unclouded by theories. You will act solely by the light of your intelligence. And you’ve got lots of that. That novel of yours showed the most extraordinary intelligence—at least as far as that blighter at the bookstall would let me read. I wouldn’t have a professional chicken farmer about the place if he paid to come. If he applied to me, I should simply send him away. Natural intelligence is what we want. Then we can rely on you?”

  “Very well,” I said slowly. “It’s very kind of you to ask me.”

  “Business, laddie, pure business. Very well, then. We shall catch the eleven-twenty at Waterloo. Don’t miss it. Look out for me on the platform. If I see you first, I’ll shout.”

  Chapter 3.

  Waterloo Station, Some Fellow-Travellers, and a Girl with Brown Hair

  The austerity of Waterloo Station was lightened on the following morning at ten minutes to eleven, when I arrived to catch the train to Combe Regis, by several gleams of sunshine and a great deal of bustle and activity on the various platforms. A porter took my suitcase and golf-clubs, and arranged an assignation on Number 6 platform. I bought my ticket, and made my way to the bookstall, where, in the interests of trade, I inquired in a loud and penetrating voice if they had got Jeremy Garnet’s “Manoeuvres of Arthur.” Being informed that they had not, I clicked my tongue reproachfully, advised them to order in a supply, as the demand was likely to be large, and spent a couple of shillings on a magazine and some weekly papers. Then, with ten minutes to spare, I went off in search of Ukridge.

  I found him on platform six. The eleven-twenty was already alongside, and presently I observed my porter cleaving a path towards me with the suit-case and golf-bag.

  “Here you are!” shouted Ukridge vigorously. “Good for you. Thought you were going to miss it.”

  I shook hands with the smiling Mrs. Ukridge.

  “I’ve got a carriage and collared two corner seats. Millie goes down in another. She doesn’t like the smell of smoke when she’s travelling. Hope we get the carriage to ourselves. Devil of a lot of people here this morning. Still, the more people there are in the world, the more eggs we shall sell. I can see with half an eye that all these blighters are confirmed egg-eaters. Get in, sonnie. I’ll just see the missis into her carriage, and come back to you.”

  I entered the compartment, and stood at the door, looking out in the faint hope of thwarting an invasion of fellow-travellers. Then I withdrew my head suddenly and sat down. An elderly gentleman, accompanied by a pretty girl, was coming towards me. It was not this type of fellow traveller whom I had hoped to keep out. I had noticed the girl at the booking office. She had waited by the side of the queue while the elderly gentleman struggled gamely for the tickets, and I had had plenty of opportunity of observing her appearance. I had debated with myself whether her hair should rightly be described as brown or golden. I had finally decided on brown. Once only had I met her eyes, and then only for an instant. They might be blue. They might be grey. I could not be certain. Life is full of these problems.

  “This seems to be tolerably empty, my dear Phyllis,” said the elderly gentleman, coming to the door of the compartment and looking in. “You’re sure you don’t object to a smoking-carriage?”

  “Oh no, father. Not a bit.”

  “Then I think …” said the elderly gentleman, getting in.

  The inflection of his voice suggested the Irishman. It was not a brogue. There were no strange words. But the general effect was Irish.

  “That’s good,” he said, settling himself and pulling out a cigar case.

  The bustle of the platform had increased momentarily, until now, when, from the snorting of the engine, it seemed likely that the train might start at any minute, the crowd’s excitement was extreme. Shrill cries echoed down the platform. Lost sheep, singly and in companies, rushed to and fro, peering eagerly into carriages in search of seats. Piercing voices ordered unknown “Tommies” and “Ernies” to “keep by aunty, now.” Just as Ukridge returned, that /sauve qui peut/ of the railway crowd, the dreaded “Get in anywhere,” began to be heard, and the next moment an avalanche of warm humanity poured into the carriage.

  The newcomers consisted of a middle-aged lady, addressed as Aunty, very stout and clad in a grey alpaca dress, skin-tight; a youth called Albert, not, it was to appear, a sunny child; a niece of some twenty years, stolid and seemingly without interest in life, and one or two other camp-followers and retainers.

  Ukridge slipped into his corner, adroitly foiling Albert, who had made a dive in that direction. Albert regarded him fixedly and reproachfully for a space, then sank into the seat beside me and began to chew something that smelt of aniseed.

  Aunty, meanwhile, was distributing her substantial weight evenly between the feet of the Irish gentleman and those of his daughter, as she leaned out of the window to converse with a lady friend in a straw hat and hair curlers, accompanied by three dirty and frivolous boys. It was, she stated, lucky that she had caught the train. I could not agree with her. The girl with the brown hair and the eyes that were neither blue or grey was bearing the infliction, I noticed, with angelic calm. She even smiled. This was when the train suddenly moved off with a jerk, and Aunty, staggering back, sat down on the bag of food which Albert had placed on the seat beside him.

  “Clumsy!” observed Albert tersely.

  “/Albert/, you mustn’t speak to Aunty so!”

  “Wodyer want to sit on my bag for then?” said Albert disagreeably.

  They argued the point. Argument in no wise interfered with Albert’s power of mastication. The odour of aniseed became more and more painful. Ukridge had lighted a cigar, and I understood why Mrs. Ukridge preferred to travel in another compartment, for

  “In his hand he bore the brand

  Which none but he might smoke.”

  I looked across the carriage stealthily to see how the girl was enduring this combination of evils, and noticed that she had begun to read. And as she put the book down to look out of the window, I saw with a thrill that trickled like warm water down my spine that her book was “The Manoeuvres of Arthur.” I gasped. That a girl should look as pretty as that and at the same time have the rare intelligence to read Me … well, it seemed an almost superhuman combination of the excellencies. And more devoutly than ever I cursed in my heart these intrusive outsiders who had charged in at the last moment and destroyed for ever my chance of making this wonderful girl’s acquaintance. But for them, we might have become intimate in the first half hour. As it was, what were we? Ships that pass in the night! She would get out at some beastly wayside station, and vanish from my life without my ever having even spoken to her.

  Aunty, meanwhile, having retired badly worsted from her encounter with Albert, who showed a skill in logomachy that marked him out as a future labour member, was consoling herself with meat sandwiches. The niece was demolishing sausage rolls. The atmosphere of the carriage was charged with a blend of odours, topping all Ukridge’s cigar, now in full blast.

  The train raced on towards the sea. It was a warm day, and a torpid peace began to settle down upon the carriage. Ukridge had thrown away the stump of his cigar, and was now leaning back with his mouth open and his eyes shut. Aunty, still clutching a much-bitten section of a beef sandwich, was breathing heavily and swaying from side to side. Albert and the niece were dozing, Albert’s jaws working automatically, even in sleep.

  “What’s your book, my dear?” asked the Irishman.

  “‘The Manoeuvres of Arthur,’ father. By Jeremy Garnet.”

  I would not have believed without the evidence of my ears that my name could possibly have sounded so musical.

  “Molly McEachern gave it to me when I left the Abbey. She keeps a shelf of books for her guests when they are going away. Books that s
he considers rubbish, and doesn’t want, you know.”

  I hated Miss McEachern without further evidence.

  “And what do you think of it?”

  “I like it,” said the girl decidedly. The carriage swam before my eyes. “I think it is very clever.”

  What did it matter after that that the ass in charge of the Waterloo bookstall had never heard of “The Manoeuvres of Arthur,” and that my publishers, whenever I slunk in to ask how it was selling, looked at me with a sort of grave, paternal pity and said that it had not really “begun to move?” Anybody can write one of those rotten popular novels which appeal to the unthinking public, but it takes a man of intellect and refinement and taste and all that sort of thing to turn out something that will be approved of by a girl like this.

  “I wonder who Jeremy Garnet is,” she said. “I’ve never heard of him before. I imagine him rather an old young man, probably with an eyeglass, and conceited. And I should think he didn’t know many girls. At least if he thinks Pamela an ordinary sort of girl. She’s a cr-r-eature,” said Phyllis emphatically.

  This was a blow to me. I had always looked on Pamela as a well-drawn character, and a very attractive, kittenish little thing at that. That scene between her and the curate in the conservatory … And when she talks to Arthur at the meet of the Blankshires … I was sorry she did not like Pamela. Somehow it lowered Pamela in my estimation.

  “But I like Arthur,” said the girl.

  This was better. A good chap, Arthur,—a very complete and thoughtful study of myself. If she liked Arthur, why, then it followed … but what was the use? I should never get a chance of speaking to her. We were divided by a great gulf of Aunties and Alberts and meat sandwiches.

  The train was beginning to slow down. Signs of returning animation began to be noticeable among the sleepers. Aunty’s eyes opened, stared vacantly round, closed, and reopened. The niece woke, and started instantly to attack a sausage roll. Albert and Ukridge slumbered on.

  A whistle from the engine, and the train drew up at a station. Looking out, I saw that it was Yeovil. There was a general exodus. Aunty became instantly a thing of dash and electricity, collected parcels, shook Albert, replied to his thrusts with repartee, and finally heading a stampede out of the door.

  The Irishman and his daughter also rose, and got out. I watched them leave stoically. It would have been too much to expect that they should be going any further.

  “Where are we?” said Ukridge sleepily. “Yeovil? Not far now. I tell you what it is, old horse, I could do with a drink.”

  With that remark he closed his eyes again, and returned to his slumbers. And, as he did so, my eye, roving discontentedly over the carriage, was caught by something lying in the far corner. It was “The Manoeuvres of Arthur.” The girl had left it behind.

  I suppose what follows shows the vanity that obsesses young authors. It did not even present itself to me as a tenable theory that the book might have been left behind on purpose, as being of no further use to the owner. It only occurred to me that, if I did not act swiftly, the poor girl would suffer a loss beside which the loss of a purse or vanity-case were trivial.

  Five seconds later I was on the platform.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “I think …?”

  “Oh, thank you so much,” said the girl.

  I made my way back to the carriage, and lit my pipe in a glow of emotion.

  “They are blue,” I said to my immortal soul. “A wonderful, deep, soft, heavenly blue, like the sea at noonday.”

  Chapter 4.

  The Arrival

  From Axminster to Combe Regis the line runs through country as attractive as any that can be found in the island, and the train, as if in appreciation of this fact, does not hurry over the journey. It was late afternoon by the time we reached our destination.

  The arrangements for the carrying of luggage at Combe Regis border on the primitive. Boxes are left on the platform, and later, when he thinks of it, a carrier looks in and conveys them into the valley and up the hill on the opposite side to the address written on the labels. The owner walks. Combe Regis is not a place for the halt and maimed.

  Ukridge led us in the direction of the farm, which lay across the valley, looking through woods to the sea. The place was visible from the station, from which, indeed, standing as it did on the top of a hill, the view was extensive.

  Half-way up the slope on the other side of the valley we left the road and made our way across a spongy field, Ukridge explaining that this was a short cut. We climbed through a hedge, crossed a stream and another field, and after negotiating a difficult bank, topped with barbed wire, found ourselves in a garden.

  Ukridge mopped his forehead, and restored his pince-nez to their original position from which the passage of the barbed wire had dislodged them.

  “This is the place,” he said. “We’ve come in by the back way. Saves time. Tired, Millie?”

  “A little, dear. I should like some tea.”

  “Same here,” I agreed.

  “That’ll be all right,” said Ukridge. “A most competent man of the name of Beale and his wife are in charge at present. I wrote to them telling them that we were coming to-day. They will be ready for us. That’s the way to do things, Garny old horse. Quiet efficiency. Perfect organisation.”

  We were at the front door by this time. Ukridge rang the bell. The noise echoed through the house, but there was no answering footsteps. He rang again. There is no mistaking the note of a bell in an empty house. It was plain that the competent man and his wife were out.

  “Now what?” I said.

  Mrs. Ukridge looked at her husband with calm confidence.

  “This,” said Ukridge, leaning against the door and endeavouring to button his collar at the back, “reminds me of an afternoon in the Argentine. Two other cheery sportsmen and myself tried for three– quarters of an hour to get into an empty house where there looked as if there might be something to drink, and we’d just got the door open when the owner turned up from behind a tree with a shot-gun. It was a little difficult to explain. As a matter of fact, we never did what you might call really thresh the matter out thoroughly in all its aspects, and you’d be surprised what a devil of a time it takes to pick buck-shot out of a fellow. There was a dog, too.”

  He broke off, musing dreamily on the happy past, and at this moment history partially repeated itself. From the other side of the door came a dissatisfied whine, followed by a short bark.

  “Hullo,” said Ukridge, “Beale has a dog.” He frowned, annoyed. “What right,” he added in an aggrieved tone, “has a beastly mongrel, belonging to a man I employ, to keep me out of my own house? It’s a little hard. Here am I, slaving day and night to support Beale, and when I try to get into my own house his infernal dog barks at me. Upon my Sam it’s hard!” He brooded for a moment on the injustice of things. “Here, let me get to the keyhole. I’ll reason with the brute.”

  He put his mouth to the keyhole and roared “Goo’ dog!” through it. Instantly the door shook as some heavy object hurled itself against it. The barking rang through the house.

  “Come round to the back,” said Ukridge, giving up the idea of conciliation, “we’ll get in through the kitchen window.”

  The kitchen window proved to be insecurely latched. Ukridge threw it open and we climbed in. The dog, hearing the noise, raced back along the passage and flung himself at the door, scratching at the panels. Ukridge listened with growing indignation.

  “Millie, you know how to light a fire. Garnet and I will be collecting cups and things. When that scoundrel Beale arrives I shall tear him limb from limb. Deserting us like this! The man must be a thorough fraud. He told me he was an old soldier. If that’s the sort of discipline they used to keep in his regiment, thank God, we’ve got a Navy! Damn, I’ve broken a plate. How’s the fire getting on, Millie? I’ll chop Beale into little bits. What’s that you’ve got there, Garny old horse? Tea? Good. Where’s the bread? There goes another plate.
Where’s Mrs. Beale, too? By Jove, that woman wants killing as much as her blackguard of a husband. Whoever heard of a cook deliberately leaving her post on the day when her master and mistress were expected back? The abandoned woman. Look here, I’ll give that dog three minutes, and if it doesn’t stop scratching that door by then, I’ll take a rolling pin and go out and have a heart-to-heart talk with it. It’s a little hard. My own house, and the first thing I find when I arrive is somebody else’s beastly dog scratching holes in the doors and ruining the expensive paint. Stop it, you brute!”

  The dog’s reply was to continue his operations with immense vigour.

  Ukridge’s eyes gleamed behind their glasses.

  “Give me a good large jug, laddie,” he said with ominous calm.

  He took the largest of the jugs from the dresser and strode with it into the scullery, whence came a sound of running water. He returned carrying the jug with both hands, his mien that of a general who sees his way to a masterstroke of strategy.

  “Garny, old horse,” he said, “freeze onto the handle of the door, and, when I give the word, fling wide the gates. Then watch that animal get the surprise of a lifetime.”

  I attached myself to the handle as directed. Ukridge gave the word. We had a momentary vision of an excited dog of the mongrel class framed in the open doorway, all eyes and teeth; then the passage was occupied by a spreading pool, and indignant barks from the distance told that the enemy was thinking the thing over in some safe retreat.

  “Settled /his/ hash,” said Ukridge complacently. “Nothing like resource, Garny my boy. Some men would have gone on letting a good door be ruined.”

  “And spoiled the dog for a ha’porth of water,” I said.

  At this moment Mrs. Ukridge announced that the kettle was boiling. Over a cup of tea Ukridge became the man of business.

  “I wonder when those fowls are going to arrive. They should have been here to-day. It’s a little hard. Here am I, all eagerness and anxiety, waiting to start an up-to-date chicken farm, and no fowls! I can’t run a chicken farm without fowls. If they don’t come to-morrow, I shall get after those people with a hatchet. There must be no slackness. They must bustle about. After tea I’ll show you the garden, and we’ll choose a place for a fowl-run. To-morrow we must buckle to. Serious work will begin immediately after breakfast.”